Microsoft is busy creating the Creators Update, and the Fast Ring Insiders are getting glimpses of the latest and greatest of what Microsoft has to offer.

This update primarily focuses on the PC – there are no major updates for Windows 10 Mobile, but there are still a few minor improvements; as always, we are going to split these into two sections to make things easier.

For the PC

This week’s update adds a virtual touchpad for Windows 10 on tablets – but you will need a secondary monitor to use it. The update is also bringing a number of improvements for Sticky Notes and the Windows Ink Workspace Environment.

Virtual Touchpad – The touchpad is going virtual, and it’s going to support every single improvement that Microsoft has made to the precision touchpads over the past few updates; the touchscreen on most tablets is as capable as a good precision touchpad, which is what allows Microsoft to do this.

To use the new touchpad, you will require a secondary monitor – that’s the only use case that makes sense – just connect a secondary display, be it a monitor or a TV, and open the Action Centre.

In the Action Centre, now present is a “Project” Quick Action button – press that, and you will have your screen extended to the secondary display, along with a virtual touchpad on your Windows 10 tablet.

If you right click the taskbar (or tap and hold on it), you will see a new “Show touchpad button” option – this will toggle the button to hide/unhide the virtual touchpad, right from your taskbar. Quite handy.

As mentioned, all the improvements Microsoft has made for the precision touchpad over the past few Insider updates, also apply to the new virtual touchpad. To customize it, simply open Settings > Devices > Touchpad while the virtual touchpad is open – that’s the important bit.

Sticky Notes – The Stick Notes app is getting an update to version 1.2.9.0, and it makes a whole bunch of improvements to the Sticky Notes experience.

Sticky Notes could recognize flights, emails, URLs, phone numbers, addresses, time, and stocks within a note for a while now – but not in every language or locale.

The latest update extends the support for these features to a few new locales and languages; below, we have listed the new locales and languages for each feature.

These are the new additions to locales and languages – the existing locales and languages are continued to be supported.

If the Insights feature isn’t enabled for you, just press on the “…” and press Settings > Enable insights. This will only work if your active keyboard is from one of the support locales and languages.

Sticky Notes also have a few minor improvements and known issues; you can check those out in ‘minor improvements’ section below.

Windows Ink – The Windows Ink Workspace and everything that surrounds it has been getting a whole bunch of improvements in the past few Insider builds. In this update, there’s a list of minor improvements and general fixes as well. You can have a look at them in the ‘minor improvements’ section below.

There is, however, something a bit more significant – a new handwriting training tool. If you happen to use a Pen device and browse to Pen & Windows Ink Settings, you will find a new “Get to know my handwriting” tool; press on the option to launch it, and you can train Windows Ink to recognize your handwriting better.

The Registry Address Bar – A few builds ago, the Windows team added an address bar to the Windows Registry – nothing fancy, but something functional. It was a requested feature, and this build makes a few improvements to it.

First, you can now use Ctrl + L to focus on the address bar – Alt + D was already supported, but Insiders feedback suggested Ctrl + L is much preferred. Now both shortcuts will work.

Second, you can now use shorthand notations for the HKEY names in the address bar; for example:

You can use HKCR instead of HKEY_CLASS_ROOT

You can use HKCU instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER

You can use HKLM instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

You can use HKU instead of HKEY_USERS

These will help users quickly get to where they want, without typing the full – and frankly unnecessarily long – HKEY names.

Minor Fixes & Improvements

Sticky Notes:

There were a few issues causing Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y to work unreliably while typing, which have been fixed.

Text input performance while typing has been improved – things should be smoother now.

If there’s a new Sticky Notes app update, not only will it show up in the Windows Store; you will also get notified of the update within the Sticky Notes app with an in-app prompt.

A few minor UI/UX polish and improvements across the Sticky Notes app.

Windows Ink:

The number of recently used apps shown in the Windows Ink Workspace is now increased to six.

There is now a link to quickly access your pen settings in the Windows Ink Workspace.

Performance improvements while loading Sketchpad when there’s a lot of ink present on the sketch.

The protractor tool introduced recently is getting an improvement: you can now use your mouse scroll-wheel to shrink or expand the protractor.

Fixed a strange issue with the background, caused while using Windows Ink Workspace and Sticky Notes together.

An issue causing a crash if you simultaneously inked and resized the protractor in Sketchpad has been fixed.

Hyper-V VM:

Fixed an issue causing the VM window to be not large enough to avoid scrollbars – depending on the zoom level – despite there being enough space for it.

The zoom level preference should now be preserved for the next VM session.

If the Windows taskbar were set to top, the title bar of a maximized VM window would be occluded – this has been fixed.

File Explorer:

Fixed an issue that was causing File Explorer to crash while creating or renaming a folder on a network share.

An issue that made File Explorer show deleted files with a 0-byte size has been fixed.

An issue was causing Internet Explorer to crash a few seconds after launch. It has been fixed.

Fixed an issue where, in Microsoft Edge, after canceling a file download, the progress bar for the next file downloaded might appear to be stuck at the point at which the old file’s download was when it was canceled.

Cortana:

When using Cortana in French, an issue was causing the command “Prendre une <photo/video/selfie>” – “Take a picture/video/selfie” – to open a Bing search result, rather than the Camera app. This issue has been fixed.

Fixed an issue causing Cortana to crash if you typed “Create an appointment” and then clicked on the resulting suggestion to “Create an appointment.”

Pressing Windows Key + L will now properly lock the computer – as expected – while playing a full-screen game.

The text on the Outlook Calendar tile in the Start screen was a bit fuzzy – this has been fixed.

The Alt + F4 shutdown dialog will now scale itself better according to the display DPI, especially when connected to an external monitor.

Fixed an issue that could result in the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) periodically showing the candidate window in the upper left corner of the desktop and not being able to enter text into the Office 2016 apps and some other text editors.

Fixed an issue where the tooltips for the taskbar notification area items were scaled incorrectly after a DPI change until the PC was rebooted or the user logged out and back in again.

After this build, preferred UAC settings, start-up shortcuts, File Explorer folders that were pinned to the Start, will be preserved across upgrades.

The Windows Default Lock Screen window sometimes appeared after logging in – this has been fixed.

Vertical lists written in XAML – as found in apps such as Groove Music – would animate in from the sides unexpectedly; an odd bug, but it has been fixed.

Known Issues

Sticky Notes: The option to enable Insights might not show up if you switch between active keyboards while typing in Sticky Notes.

If you double-click on an Excel document from the File Explorer, Excel will crash. You can still open the document from within Excel.

Microsoft Studios games such as Sudoku, Minesweeper, Jigsaw, etc. might freeze on the splash screen at launch.

For Mobile

This build isn’t very big on Windows 10 Mobile – but there are a few noteworthy improvements, and some new bugs as well. Here’s what’s coming.

Minor Fixed & Improvements

Cortana:

When using Cortana in French, an issue was causing the command “Prendre une <photo/video/selfie>” – “Take a picture/video/selfie” – to open a Bing search result, rather than the Camera app. This issue has been fixed.

Fixed an issue causing Cortana to crash if you typed “Create an appointment” and then clicked on the resulting suggestion to “Create an appointment.”

Improved performance while typing for users on English (India) locale.

Fixed an issue causing the Data Usage Settings to prompt for a data limit, even if you set the data plan as unlimited.

For users with Dual-SIM phones, it is now easier to differentiate between the data used on each SIM card.

Narrator wasn’t giving feedback when adjusting sliders (like in the volume flyout) – this has been fixed.

Microsoft Edge was failing to launch for some users due to a migration error after upgrading to a new build – this has been fixed.

Known Issues

The issue with installing additional language, keyboards, or speech packs introduced in the past few builds continues: If you have existing ones installed, you can continue using them. You can use the Windows Device Recovery Tool to go back to a previous version of Windows 10 Mobile or Windows Phone 8.1 and install the language packs, then upgrade to this build – you will keep the packs.

If you used the ‘date change’ workaround previously to upgrade to build 14951 or 14955, do not use it any longer. The MSA (Microsoft account) ticket on your device needs to expire for it to receive the latest build. If you changed your date by something ridiculous – like 30 years – you might need to do a device reset.

That’s it, folks

This wasn’t really a big update – there are a few improvements here and there, but nothing quite worth a note. It’s more of a bug-smashing update, with a few minor life-improvement features to go along with it.

You can read more about this update on Microsoft’s blog if you are not satisfied with this post. As always – as an Insider, you are expected to submit all of your feedback and suggestions so the next Insider update can be a bit more exciting and useful.

All of this is helping towards a better Creators Update, folks! Make sure it’s the best Windows 10 update yet.